yanni's Shortform

I like it too, and because your comment made me think about it, I now kind of wish it said "orders of magnitude too young"

This reminds me of when Charlie Munger died at 99, and many said of him "he was just a child". Less of a nod to transhumanist aspirations, and more to how he retained his sparkling energy and curiosity up until death. There are quite a few good reasons to write "dead far too young". 

This question is two steps removed from reality.  Here’s what I mean by that.  Putting brackets around each of the two steps:

what is the threshold that needs meeting [for the majority of people in the EA community] [to say something like] "it would be better if EAs didn't work at OpenAI"?
 

Without these steps, the question becomes 

What is the threshold that needs meeting before it would be better if people didn’t work at OpenAI?

Personally, I find that a more interesting question.  Is there a reason why the question is phrased at two removes like that?  Or am I missing the point?

What does a "majority of the EA community" mean here? Does it mean that people who work at OAI (even on superalignment or preparedness) are shunned from professional EA events? Does it mean that when they ask, people tell them not to join OAI? And who counts as "in the EA community"? 

I don't think it's that constructive to bar people from all or even most EA events just because they work at OAI, even if there's a decent amount of consensus people should not work there. Of course, it's fine to host events (even professional ones!) that don't invite OAI people (or Anthropic people, or METR people, or FAR AI people, etc), and they do happen, but I don't feel like barring people from EAG or e.g. Constellation just because they work at OAI would help make the case, (not that there's any chance of this happening in the near term) and would most likely backfire. 

I think that currently, many people (at least in the Berkeley EA/AIS community) will tell you to not join OAI if asked. I'm not sure if they form a majority in terms of absolute numbers, but they're at least a majority in some professional circles (e.g. both most people at FAR/FAR Labs and at Lightcone/Lighthaven would probably say this). I also think many people would say that on the margin, too many people are trying to join OAI rather than other important jobs. (Due to factors like OAI paying a lot more than non-scaling lab jobs/having more legible prestige.)

Empirically, it sure seems significantly more people around here join Anthropic than OAI, despite Anthropic being a significantly smaller company.

Though I think almost none of these people would advocate for ~0 x-risk motivated people to work at OAI, only that the marginal x-risk concerned technical person should not work at OAI. 

What specific actions are you hoping for here, that would cause you to say "yes, the majority of EA people say 'it's better to not work at OAI'"?

[ I don't consider myself EA, nor a member of the EA community, though I'm largely compatible in my preferences ]

I'm not sure it matters what the majority thinks, only what marginal employees (those who can choose whether or not to work at OpenAI) think.  And what you think, if you are considering whether to apply, or whether to use their products and give them money/status.

Personally, I just took a job in a related company (working on applications, rather than core modeling), and I have zero concerns that I'm doing the wrong thing.

[ in response to request to elaborate: I'm not going to at this time.  It's not secret, nor is my identity generally, but I do prefer not to make it too easy for 'bots or searchers to tie my online and real-world lives together. ]

This practice doesn't mean excusing bad behavior. You can still hold others accountable while taking responsibility for your own reactions.

Well, what if there's a good piece of code (if you'll allow the crudity) in your head, and someone else's bad behavior is geared at hacking/exploiting that piece of code? The harm done is partly due to that piece of code and its role in part of your reaction to their bad behavior. But the implication is that they should stop with their bad behavior, not that you should get rid of the good code. I believe you'll respond "Ah, but you see, there's more than two options. You can change yourself in ways other than just deleting the code. You could recognize how the code is actually partly good and partly bad, and refactor it; and you could add other code to respond skillfully to their bad behavior; and you can add other code to help them correct their behavior.". Which I totally agree with, but at this point, what's being communicated by "taking self-blame" other than at best "reprogram yourself in Good/skillful ways" or more realistically "acquiesce to abuse"?

The Stoics put this idea in a much kinder way: control the controllable (specifically our actions and attitudes), accept the uncontrollable. 
The problem is, people's could's are broken. I have managed to make myself much unhappier by thinking I can control my actions until I read Nate Soares' post I linked above. You can't, even in the everyday definition of control, forgetting about paradoxes of "free will".

Nice write up on this (even if it was AI-assisted), thanks for sharing! I believe another benefit is Raising One's Self-Esteem: If high self-esteem can be thought of as consistently feeling good about oneself, then if someone takes responsibility for their emotions, recognizing that they can change their emotions at will, they can consistently choose to feel good about and love themselves as long as their conscience is clear.

This is inline with "The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem" by Nathaniel Branden: living consciously, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living purposefully, and personal integrity.

There is a AI x-risk documentary currently being filmed. An Inconvenient Doom. https://www.documentary-campus.com/training/masterschool/2024/inconvenient-doom It covers some aspects on AI safety, but doesn't focus on it exactly.